This post continues our series ‘The Whole of Life for Christ‘. It follows Antony Billington and Mark Greene’s excellent book with the same name.
Read (Galatians 5:13-26).
When we become Christians we can have an acute understanding of what it means to have the freedom that Christ has won for us. For some of us no longer do we feel that we are slaves to money, success, and self-promotion but in Christ we are free to live as we were designed to live: with Him as King. Confident and assured that we are safe with Him the one true King as Lord over all. This understanding, though, can be quickly lost and forgotten as we get caught up in the business of everyday life. Particularly in the academic work environment. But we mustn’t forget it! Why? Because seeing that we’re free to live how God Himself intended us to live makes our work life, our relationships with colleagues, and our research environment ultimately more fulfilling and satisfying.
To see this, think about your motivations for academic excellence. What is it that motivates you to get that next publication, win that research funding, write that review, or attend that conference? In order to get these things, we can, no doubt, be motivated by envy, selfish ambition and jealousy. Someone else has recently published in your area of study and is reaping the benefits. Someone else’s name appears on the top of that funding grant you applied for. In response to these events we can respond with, as Paul calls them ‘acts of the flesh’: envy, jealousy and selfish ambition etc. Now we shouldn’t be naïve: the acts of the flesh can make us get our heads down and work! But it also breeds fear, dissention and factions. It disunites and divides and it ultimately makes for a toxic research environment! Reflect for a moment on how these attitudes disunite and divide your research environment.
But we (Christians) are called not to live like this. Paul in his letter to the Galatians calls us to ‘keep in step with the Spirit’ (Gal 5:25) and keep away from the ‘acts of the flesh.’ In other words, since we’ve been set free by Christ we should live as his Spirit directs: in love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These fruits of the Spirit should be our motivations in our academic work and can be a force for real change in our universities. The question remains though, how? How do we get this fruit of the Spirit? Well, in John 15:5 Jesus tells us: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” We get this fruit by remaining in Him! When we became Christians Jesus grafted us into himself and it is in virtue of our being in Him, in virtue of Jesus’ choosing us, that we can be fruitful. This is important to remember particularly as we’re so often drawn back to a life apart from Him; living as those who are not members of Christ.
Take a moment to think about your workplace and answer the following:
In what areas of your work do you find it most difficult to display the fruit of the Spirit? Why is that? What could you do to change that? How might this change affect your work and relationships with your colleagues?
In what areas of your work have you experienced the fruit of the Spirit change your work and relationships with colleagues for the good? What fruit would you like to see cultivated even more?
- Report on the Tyndale Fellowship Quadrennial Conference: Marriage, family and relationships - September 5, 2016
- Whole-life fruitfulness - June 6, 2016
- Common Good and Kingdom of God: Implications for Christian Scholarship - March 22, 2016
